The Floundering of America

The U.S. future based on current trends is meaner, riskier and less dynamic.

By

William A. Galston

Nov. 19, 2013 7:37 p.m. ET

As Washington lurches from crisis to crisis, the United States is floundering. "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending," Abraham Lincoln declared in 1858, "we could better judge what to do, and how to do it." In Lincoln's time, we were tending toward a conflict over slavery. Today, we are hurtling toward a less dynamic economy, a meaner society and a riskier world.

To begin, we are in the early stage of a historic shift in the U.S. workforce. In the four decades from 1970...